


After You Get What I Want

by homunculus100



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Hospitalization, Incest, M/M, Medical, Set directly after Al gets his new body, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24202306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homunculus100/pseuds/homunculus100
Summary: After a long hospital stay, Ed and Al return to their roots.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric/Edward Elric
Comments: 5
Kudos: 108





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please be aware there will be some canon noncompliance, as I’m still watching the series. Thank you.

They made Al leave the hospital in a wheelchair, as they always make patients do, but the minute Ed brought the two of them back out those wooden double doors that he had carried Al through months ago, Al leaned forward in his chair. He braced both of his bony hands on the armrests, and looked up to Ed for approval. He saw the same expression on his brother’s face that he knew was on his: the same crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the same light twinkling in his irises, the same insuppressible grin.

“You sure?” Ed asked.

Al nodded. Then, he stood up.

Something had been wrong. Al’s body wasn’t right. It wasn’t the one he used to have. It was a new one, one that Ed had made for him, and so, in Ed’s mind, it was no wonder that it was faulty. He couldn’t make Al like their mom had made him.

And yet, this skeletal little figure slumped before Ed was undeniably Him. This had been the best he could do for Al. He’d picked up his brother’s collapsed body and set out to find help as quickly as possible.

Al’s condition was critical when Ed first ran in to the city hospital carrying him. He was so light—terribly, horribly light—and so limp, curled in on himself foetally, still in Ed’s arms. He had been breathing so faintly, and his heart beating so slowly, that Ed couldn’t feel either through his own shaking and the pounding in his ears.

His fingers wouldn’t uncurl themselves, wouldn’t let Al go until the emergency responders told him in no uncertain terms that if he wasn’t already dead, he would be if Ed didn’t step back. And so he had to watch his little brother, his little brother he’d only been able to hold for a few hours, get wheeled away where he couldn’t follow.

He was alive, but barely. Assuming complications from being so severely underweight, and having remained unresponsive for such an alarmingly extended period of time, he was treated as comatose. When someone came out of the operating room to inform Ed that Al’s esophagus was too narrow to fit the feeding tube down, they’d have to go in abdominally, and how high the likelihood of complications were for someone in his condition, Ed’s face crumpled. He said to do whatever it took to save his brother.

Al left the emergency operating room a few hours later, and was transferred to a small individual patient room, where Ed was finally allowed to see him. He barely made a dent in the adjustable hospital bed. He looked like he was more tubes than body. The only way to ascertain that Al was still there was the nearly imperceptible readings on the EKG needle, fluttering with each tiny beat of Al’s heart.

It was to be a difficult initial recovery. Days of arrhythmia sporadically setting off the EKG, followed by weeks of dangerously heavy sedation fading in and out of consciousness, followed by a month of the one thing that’s worse than being unable to wake up from pain: being unable to sleep from pain.

A week passed. Ed tried not to fly off the handle when the fourth doctor explained to him that there wasn’t anything like his brother in the literature—he KNEW that—and tried even harder still when they asked if they couldn’t speak to his parents instead, this _really_ is something they should be discussing with them, these _really_ aren’t decisions you should be making. Dead, dead to him, and about to be dead: that was the state of Ed’s family. But, if his time in the military had taught him anything, it was that even professionals, even doctors, even prestigious experts with 30 years’ practice, respected by everyone around them, even those adults lacked the basic objectivity to treat his brother fairly if he wasn’t _nice_ to them. They needed the 16-year-old with a dying brother to say _please_ and _thank you_. Or else. So he did.

He carefully observed how the nurses took care of him, so that he could do it himself. He listened in intently when the staff said anything about his brother, whether it was in front of him or not. He overheard a lot of things. Such as, the x-rays already came back clear, right? Isn’t it a lost cause, then? If he cares so much, why didn’t that older brother of his bring him in sooner? Who lets their own brother get to looking like that?

It pissed him off to no end when students came in doing their rotations, clutching their yellow legal pads and listening to the doctor lecture about What To Do With Diagnoses Unspecified and not looking at him no matter how hard he stared. He got so fed up with it one morning, he stormed off to the adjacent medical library, checked out as many books as his arms could carry on Patients In Serious But Stable Condition, and resolved to do it all himself. His brother wasn’t a specimen, and he was going to get Al away from these monsters who treated him like one.

By midnight, he was resigned to the fact it was impossible. He couldn’t have gotten the materials to transmute medication even if he tried, let alone the equipment. There was no choice but to leave his brother in these people’s hands. Clearly, obviously, of course, this was way over his head. It was a relief to him, then, that Al wasn’t awake to witness his stupidity, and his foolishness, and his sobbing.

It was intensely boring, too. Watching the IV drip drain fluids into him, and the suprapubic catheter carry them out. The ventilator pushing oxygen in, carbon dioxide involuntarily collapsing out. The gastronomic feeding tube shoving food in, and Ed swapping out the pads beneath him that absorbed everything that wasn’t being retained, which seemed to be everything. The spasmodic twitching of his muscles when Ed rolled him over to prevent bedsores. The spontaneous, meaningless vocalizations that Ed tried so desperately to hear his brother’s voice in. The sheen breaking out on his forehead from pain which Ed had absolutely no way to identify or ameliorate.

Every bodily function that Al had lost in the transmutation, all the things he was supposed to be able to do for himself now, he still couldn’t do. It made Ed heartsick.

There was no moment of sweet, drowsy little brother fluttering his eyelashes open for the first time to see his beloved older brother keeping watch over him. At some completely random, indeterminate point, Al woke up crying, and hurting, and confused. His vision was blurred, he didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t comprehend the tube in his throat choking him.

He began dry heaving around it, and the contraction of his abdominal muscles opened the sutures around the insertion site of his feeding tube. His nerves seized around the catheter and multiple IV cannulas. His body was scared, panicked, suddenly aware of and rejecting all the foreign presences forcing holes into him.

Ed had then bodily dragged a nurse down the hall to Al’d bedside, broken the lock on his medicine cabinet, thrown the necessary materials at her and demanded she tranquilize him per protocol right now. He would, without a doubt, have been banned from reentry if the matronly nurse hadn’t had the grace to lie about the incident on his behalf. It was the first time one of the staff had actually taken an act of kindness for him, rather than just muttering condolences. She made him fix the lock and promise to just ask next time.

Ed had had to turn away, so she wouldn’t see how hard it hit him, hearing someone else say there would be a next time.

Time moved forward, but the individual boxes on the calendar looked like some sort of cruel joke to Ed. Even funnier when one of the students who came in glanced at the blank calendar and, without a word, flipped the page. Apparently it was next month.

He knew he was being ugly to everyone. He knew it wasn’t healthy sitting around all day doing nothing. He washed Al more than he washed himself. His shortest bangs got in his eyes now, and his longest ones were approaching his shoulders. He’d put his hair up a few days ago, in a pattern that just barely qualified as a braid, just so it wouldn’t get in the way when he leaned over Al. He didn’t know when he’d feel like redoing it. It seemed like pointless work, pointless use of his hands, compared to using them to care for Al.

He also knew this should be a time for him to gather himself, to sit with his thoughts and process everything he’d been through. It was quiet, save for the steady beeping of the EKG he barely heard anymore, and the imitation air sound of the ventilator forcing Al’s lungs open. He had so much free time. Wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to unpack his life thus far, to reflect upon it, so that he could better help Al with his when the time came?

Yet, he couldn’t. He tried to start from the beginning, but he didn’t remember mom’s funeral very well. That’s fine, he figured, he was young. And then their Sensei’s apprenticeship was _meant_ to be punishing, obviously the discipline had stuck with him, he didn’t really think he needed to remember the fine details. He didn’t recall the accident itself that well either, having been deranged with repressed grief in the period leading up to it, and then in a fugue state for the period thereafter, but that’s why he had kept the reminder on him. Getting fitted for automail was a vague torture sequence, getting licensed even vaguer, and then…

His head shook itself, and he realized he’d been spacing out, eyes unfocused, looking at the space just above Al’s head. A lot had happened—he was sure it was all in there, but it wasn’t coming to him, not in the right order, not right now. Just still, dull images, flashes of vibrant red behind his retinas, the context for which some part of his brain wasn’t connecting. His head felt full, dense, a vague pressure emanating from inside his skull. There was a muffled ringing in his ears.

He supposed he’d have to wait and go over it with Al, then, when they both got there. Al would fill in the pieces he didn’t have. He always did.

He was loathe for Winry to come visit, because instead of her usual loud chastising and disapproval, she was _careful_. She was _worried_ to speak her mind around him. She didn’t _say_ anything about his wrinkled clothes or the half-empty cups of coffee with countless rings and nothing else scattered about available surfaces. It was nice seeing her talk to Al like nothing was amiss, though. She updated him on things back home, went off on tangents about what she was working on, told him what she had for breakfast on the train there, filled the room with her presence in the easy way she could.

She’d always been good about treating Al like the person he was, regardless of what he looked like, and it was no different now. That, at least, was a welcome change from everyone else here.

She did manage to comb through Ed’s hair against his wishes and re-set it in a significantly neater braid, but when she offered to just cut it too, Ed said no. Ed said, Al cuts my hair. And she didn’t say a single thing in retort. She just gave up. She squeezed Al’s hand, said see you again soon, and walked out. That, if nothing else, was how Ed knew he must look really bad.

There were many more instances of Al waking up like the one before, and they terrified Ed each time. But there were so many, and they kept happening, and he eventually acclimated to his new normal level of dread. He hadn’t really had to worry about his brother being in pain for years, not like this, and now here it was. A constant, anxiety-inducing threat, unpredictable and terrible.

He felt it, too. He felt the choking, and the nausea, and the fear, and the sweat breaking out all over his body, just like Al did lying in the hospital bed. He found part of himself wishing his brother would stay asleep, just for now, just so Al wouldn’t have to hurt like that, and then promptly beat that part of himself to the ground.

The shift from the first phase of his recovery to his second was abrupt. Sometime around the witching hour, far from midnight but well before dawn, Al’s eyes opened, rolled forward in his head, and then stayed that way. Ed had been in the process of destroying the skin around his third fingernail with his teeth, having already chewed raw his thumb and index. It took him a minute to notice and then identify where that strange, inhuman _gluck_ sound was coming from, even longer still to understand that Al was looking at him and actually seeing him, unlike usual. Ed could sense it: the recognition in his expression. The noise was Al, trying to move the ventilation tube in his pharynx, to speak around it.

Ed staggered over to his bedside in a daze, leaned over him, and cupped Al’s cold, hollow cheek in his palm. He felt like he himself was more disoriented than Al seemed to be, looking at the sudden clarity in his little brother’s olive-brown eyes, which were staring right back into his. He had a million things to say, to ask, but Al was silently telling him to hold on, to wait. To let him go first. Ed could hear Al’s throat tearing open when he said the one word he had been struggling so hard to say: “Niisan.”

From then on, Al was the perfect patient. He profusely thanked the medical staff, and apologized just as profusely to Ed when he needed to be cleaned or rotated or when he threw up until he was dry heaving blood and acid because there was nothing else left. He tried whatever the staff prescribed to him, and he insisted it was no problem when the burning in his digestive system turned his skin a harsh purple-gray. When they took the ventilator out to switch him to nasal cannulas and the tube was dripping red, he said I’m Sorry. He sat very still, and tried to keep the tremors out of his hands, and the shaking out of his voice, and the tears out of his eyes.

The doctors loved him. So well-behaved! He was a wonderful liar.

It was Al taking care of Ed again. Even on what was nearly his death bed, even in this claustrophobic room that was almost his grave, even in agonizing pain, even unable to sit up, somehow, that’s what it was. It was the same as it had been after their failed transmutation: Al had awoken, had ascertained the situation as soon as he had vision with which to grasp it, and then had taken not a single second to think about himself. Now, just like then, it was immediately all about Ed.

Ed hated himself for it. He immensely regretted having not kept up his appearance. He’d lost weight alongside Al, he had heavy bags under his eyes, his skin had lost color. He hadn’t been eating right, or sleeping well, or even brushing his teeth twice a day. He was unkempt, shaggy, unbecoming. And now that version of him was the first thing Al had seen—not a capable, reliable, strong-willed older brother, but a suffering, desperate, pathetic one. A brother who needed help. A brother who couldn’t keep his shit even remotely together for a few weeks without him.

He was further embarrassed to admit he hadn’t known the answer, when Al first became lucid enough to ask how long they’d been in here for. He’d had to grab Al’s chart and do the math. This surprised Al. It was Ed who had kept such close track of their days spent on the island in their childhood. But apparently, Ed thought, without Al he didn’t keep track of much of anything.

Al attempted to placate Ed by occasionally admitting he was in pain, by rating his pain a 6/10, well, okay, perhaps a 7, oh, I just cry easily, brother, you know that. Like when we were kids. Right?

His little brother spent a lot of time looking up at the ceiling. Ed was mortified: his presence meant Al couldn’t even let himself _express_ his pain, he was trying not to _cry_ , because of him. Because Al didn’t want to worry him. But Ed couldn’t possibly leave, either. How could he tell Al that he didn’t have to pretend without putting even more pressure on him to act a certain way? What would communicating ‘the way you’re acting makes me want to kill myself’ accomplish? It would have only made him feel worse. Ed spent a good deal of time looking up, too.

It wasn’t that Al didn’t trust him. He knew that. It was that Al had his own way of dealing with things. Being brutally honest, loudly complaining, letting his negative emotions overcome him: these things didn’t make his little brother feel better, even when they were justified. Al felt best trying to pacify others, by helping people, by making himself smaller. He didn’t like being the center of attention, especially in a situation where he felt burdensome. He liked carrying other people’s baggage on his own shoulders, to see the relief on their faces, to lighten their loads for them.

So this was a lose-lose situation for them. Al couldn’t really feel okay, and so Ed couldn’t really feel okay, and thus Al couldn’t really feel okay.

Physical therapy, when it came time for that a few weeks later, was easier for Ed to stomach. He vaguely recalled how excruciating and uncomfortable and frustrating it had been for him when he had his automail installed. But, he also remembered how rewarding it had been, to experience that mental relief after being bed bound for so long. It was pain, but unlike most pain, it had a purpose.

After a week of being able to handle sitting up, with the go-ahead from their doctor and under the supervision of the matronly nurse, Ed helped Al to the side of his bed. The nurse transferred Al’s IV drip from its bedside hook to a wheeled stand, and his foley catheter to a leg strap. She unhooked the six attachment points on his chest from the EKG, and tied up the backside of his gown. She slid the thicker elastic IV for his pain medication out from his forearm. Then, Al hooked his arm over Ed’s back, and shakily, slowly, they slid Al forward, until his bare feet touched the tile floor. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Al pressed forward, shifting his weight further, until it was clear his knees were going to buckle. Ed was able to catch him with one arm easily, and he straightened his own legs for the both of them, and then Al was standing. Sensing that time was of the essence, Al took a tiny step forward, and then another, and Ed moved with him, letting Al support himself as much as he could. Four steps later, they were at the chair that had been their goal for him to reach, and Al collapsed into it, completely winded. Once it was clear he would be fine, the nurse cheered, and Al grinned—not the polite little upturn of his lips he’d kept on his face so much lately, but a real grin— and so Ed did, too: a small, spontaneous celebration of his victory.

Al then promptly fell asleep, and stayed that way in the chair for six hours.

Within a month of that, he and Ed were talking walks down the hallway, then going around the building. This seemed to both revitalize Al and take a lot out of him. Ed kept a collapsed wheelchair under one arm, in the event that Al couldn’t make it back, and his other arm hooked through Al’s.

If Ed was being honest with himself, it felt good to have at least one concrete way he could actually support Al, if only physically, instead of the other way around. It felt good to have his brother leaning against him. It felt good to be moving with him, even if it was just shuffling forward. It felt like having a foothold in time again, too, when it was all slipping away before.

There were still problems, not actually having a diagnosis for what was wrong being the most glaring one. They knew there wasn’t going to be one, although they couldn’t explain to the zealous medical students or prideful gastroenterologists why exactly that was. An alchemist might have heard them out, but even then, no one else would ever really understand _how_ , and not having a _how_ was unacceptable in the scientific mind. Ed could only hope there was some remotely comparable condition, some preexisting solution that could be reverse-engineered and applied to his brother.

Eating orally wasn’t working out well thus far, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for when getting fed through the stomach tube would turn out to be okay or not. Anything could make him faint: light exposure, the IV fluids too cold in his veins, running out of oxygen when he stopped to chat on their walks. But, despite everything, despite many days of zero or even backward progress, he seemed to be getting better overall.

Catching the faintest shadow of Ed’s ribs through his back when he changed shirts was enough to make Al burst into tears. He knew how skeletal he was, and it upset him deeply to understand that Ed hadn’t been eating, either. He made Ed march down to the medical building’s kitchen and get a meal, ‘a PROPER meal’—in his words, yet sounding so much like their mother—and bring it up. ‘Get dessert too’—in his words—and so Ed did.

Al’s lip didn’t stop quivering until Ed came back, sat down and brought the first forkful to his mouth. Then Al regained his composure. That day, Ed learned exactly how unpleasant it is to eat, let alone eat a lot, when you’ve have zero appetite for weeks, and the room smells like disinfectant, and your little brother can’t even keep juice down. Swallowing was physically difficult, and his shrunken stomach screamed in protest past the first few bites. It was nauseating. But, he’d do it for Al.

Around the three month mark, Al was decatheterized, he was allowed outside in the garden, he was keeping crackers down sometimes, he was taken off the IV pain meds and switched to oral. He proved he could walk by himself with a cane, but mostly stuck to using Ed to stabilize himself. He was reading, he was beating Ed at chess, and (much to Ed’s annoyance) getting friendly with the staff. Or, rather, he showed a genuine interest in listening to other people’s lives, and so they unloaded on him, and he let them, and so they kept coming back, and that was how Al made acquaintances everywhere. He always knew more about other people than they knew about him, because they just talked about themselves to him, and didn’t ask about him.

Ed thought they were more braindead than Al’s next-door neighbor, the way they treated his little brother like a soundboard instead of getting to know who he actually was. Which, in Ed’s completely unbiased and objective opinion, was a lot more interesting than any of them.

The first time a nurse brought up the word discharge, it almost flew over their heads. She was changing out the bed’s sheets while Al sat in the chair and Ed stood by, and she casually asked Ed whether they were considering their discharge papers yet. The brothers exchanged a look of _Ready for what? No, I don’t know what she’s talking about, either._ _No, I didn’t get any papers._ The nurse glanced between them, rapidly losing patience with whatever staring contest was going on. Al’s eyes opened in realization, and then so did Ed’s. There was an end in sight.

He was still catastrophically underweight, and had managed to put on only a precious few pounds during their time there. It was simply that there wasn’t anything more they could do for him here that Ed couldn’t do for him elsewhere. He had been stabilized, and his pain was manageable. Neither of them had any objections: Al, because he wanted to get Ed out of here, and Ed, because he had long since given up on this particular place and was eager to try elsewhere, to look for better help.

The nurse who scheduled Ed to meet with the administrator looked taken aback with how unconcerned they both were about being let go without any answers. She remarked on how excited Al must be to finally be able to go home, be back in his own room with his own things, to see all his friends. Al managed to catch Ed’s eye and give him an _it’s okay, please let it go_ look before he could say anything about it. He’d only had facial expressions for a short time, and was already quite pleased by how much he could get Ed to do with them.

The discharge planning involved a ludicrous amount of paperwork, none of which Ed was supposed to be allowed to sign as a minor on behalf of another minor, but there was no one else to do it. He almost wished he could be at Central when they got the astronomical bill for this in the post. There was the three months’ stay, with no expenses spared for Al’s treatment or medications, and the best food for both of them from the kitchen and surrounding eateries. On top of that, he and Al had, as usual, paid for and donated plenty of toys and reading material to the facility as charity, courtesy of the Amestrian State Military Finance Department. He had another fine little expense lined up for them, too, after he and Al got out of here. He signed off on receipt after receipt, barely reading them. Al was still stuck in his room; Ed wanted to get back to him already.

They also made him sit through an explanation of Al’s caregiving needs, which amount of medications he took and when, what to do if he collapsed or went catatonic, how the equipment they were sending him home with worked, etc., even though every party involved knew he already knew. They gave him a stack of paperwork and instructions he really wanted to drop directly in the trash can, but instead just left on the administrator’s desk.

He shook many hands, some more begrudgingly than others, and the feeling was mutual. He knew he’d kind of been a nightmare living here for a quarter of a year, swatting nurses’ hands away from Al, verbally threatening students, touching machines he wasn’t supposed to. A few of the staff were sympathetic to his situation, but most regarded him with the same cold apathy generally referred to as professionalism. Al had already made his rounds, saying his much lengthier goodbyes to everyone by name.

They all wondered how one Elric could be such a sweetheart, and the other such a handful.

Ed was already forgetting their names and their faces as he strode back to where Al was. All the unimportant details were falling away, sloughing off him as he went, dissipating into the tile floors, until there was nothing except Al. He felt lighter with every step. 

He unceremoniously swung the room’s door open for the last time, and there Al was in the wheelchair, sun shining through the window onto him, his few possessions bundled in Ed’s coat in his lap, and some other packed luggage of Ed’s by his side, ready to go. Al beamed at him, resplendent, and seeing his brother like that, Ed couldn’t help himself. Something cold and hard broke inside him. His emotions were bursting, spilling over, unable to be contained a second longer. He jumped up and down, and Al laughed his high, childlike, delighted laugh, the one that only seeing Ed happy brought out of him.

They were already a thousand miles away together. They were the only two people who existed anywhere. Their minds were the same. Free from tubes and machines and needles. Free from this prison. We’re free, we’re free!


	2. Chapter 2

The direct sunlight overhead felt good on Al’s face. He’d been cold ever since he first woke up in his new body, save for the bouts of hot flashes and flaring pain he’d endured. But that had been a different sort of heat—a dark, searing fever, so unlike the vivid warmth now. He could feel the UV rays getting absorbed into his translucent white-blue skin, could tell how soon it would burn.

After months of fluorescent lights punctuated with brief strolls through the shady hospital garden, he was nearly blinded by how bright the outside world was. Medical staff and patients and visitors passed by, shouting, it seemed to Al. Dogs barked. Automobile engines ripped by. The wind in the trees was like paper being crumpled inside his ears. Everything was so loud, and intense.

It was good to be out.

He was clinging to Ed, there on the street in front of the hospital. Moreso than was really necessary, but he’d gotten accustomed to hanging off his brother’s shoulder while relearning to walk, and it was comforting now. He was thrilled to be a size where he _could_ hang off his brother. He could feel his brother now! His brother could feel him! He’d thought it a billion times, but thinking it again made him perk up all the same as his eyes darted around, taking everything in.

“You okay?” Ed asked gently.

Al realized that he had tightened his grip on his brother’s arm in excitement, and consciously loosened it. Regulating his muscles was proving to be hard. He hadn’t had to think about it as much in the hospital, mostly confined to a bed, but now that he was up and reentering society, he would have to be more mindful.

Their car pulled up. Ed tossed their luggage—the wheelchair, a cooler, his suitcase full of a little clothes and a lot of Al’s medical supplies, and his bundled-up coat—in the trunk while Al faltered, seeing how compact the vehicle was. He was running the logistics of how he would best fit. He always had to be extremely careful about his spikes ripping the upholstery. They’d have to ask to slide the passenger seat forward, or perhaps he should just sit up front? But then he’d block the driver’s right side view completely, and the driver would be upset…

Ed started forward, lightly pulling Al in tow, and he lost his train of thought. Lurching, he felt a jarring falling sensation: a hypnic jerk, except he was awake and upright, like he had no sense of balance. But, he managed to fall in the same direction that his brother was going. Ed helped Al slide into the near backseat—just as a precaution, he could go from standing to sitting by himself now—then went around to the far side, and got in. Al was still attempting to process what had happened when the doors shut.

The driver was a stocky, hairy, black-bearded man with a flat cap. He appraised Al through the far side view mirror, then quickly looked away. Ed slid into the middle back seat and leaned forward, saying something to the driver, confirming the address, confirming that yes, it was that far.

Al watched the back of his brother's head, how the light coming in turned his blonde hair white at the edges, how his braid slid across his shoulders when he tilted his neck. Ed had one hand on the edge of the front seat, and with the other he blindly reached for Al’s, until he found it and took it. Then he leaned back, buckled his seat belt without letting go, and kept it there.

They headed west for a long time. The smoothly paved asphalt they drove on gradually became bumpier, less maintained, until at some point the road faded from dark grey to dusty brown and stayed that way. The multistory buildings of the city evaporated, becoming hazier and bluer against the sky, until they disappeared. The ground was cleared but undeveloped for a ways, big ugly tow lines where the earth had been ripped up, then even beyond that the ground still suffered too much from sewage to grow, and then finally, finally, green.

Finding a well-equipped hospital with a decent staff had necessitated going somewhere urban. Ed knew many rural hospitals didn’t even have a physician on hand: just a few nurses, and a wire to call upon doctors or surgeons to make the hours-long journey out to wherever they were. Which, they really only ever did if someone was dying: dying slowly, more specifically, with some chance of survival. Nurses could declare patients dead themselves, after all. No need to make the call for _that_. Ed couldn’t have stood it if they’d glanced at his brother, glanced at the phone, and decided he was close enough to put down as Dead on Arrival.

So he’d carried Al further, he’d ran and ran and ran, lungs burning, feet blistering, capillaries ripping open, sweat coming down in rivulets, his heart pounding fast enough for the both of them, until he’d brought them through the hospital doors, and he had gasped for help, no, not me, I don’t need medical attention, just him, just my brother.

The two of them had spent plenty of time in the cities, and could more or less put up with the bustle of it for a time. But, every now and then someone would eye them from the next table over at a restaurant, or while they hung off the side of the overcrowded tram, and state You’re Not From Here, Are You. Not a question, just an observation, one they were loathe to admit to.

Other people from the sticks could pick up on it: the slight hunching-in-on-oneself, the wariness of crowds, the bewilderment they tried so desperately not to show when some technology or social custom they’d never come across before casually appeared in front of them. It was overwhelming, being thrown into the flow of human traffic, getting solicited by beggars, everyone trying to sell them something, having to act like this was all well and normal when there was nothing organic or humane about it.

They could put up with it, sure. And the hospital hadn’t been so bad: busy, but self-contained, its own little autonomous community in and of itself, and Ed only ever had to brave the outside world alone to fetch books and better pillows and other such things for Al. But the claustrophobic feeling was as strong as ever, and under the stench of medical disinfectant was that industrial, burning smell that seemed to hang over every big city they’d ever been in.

It was the air. They’d been born in the middle of nowhere, the winter air so crisp and refreshing you could feel the coolness of it deep in your lungs, and when you breathed out it wasn’t just carbon dioxide, it was the clean chill taking all the bad stuff out with it, too. When darkness descended upon Resembool it was total, complete, and their first nights on earth were spent in pitch black, only the moon and the stars hung high above the silent, still void of their childhood home below.

These were instincts that stuck with them—immutable, congenital instincts, that made something in their very beings reject light pollution, and smog, and traffic, and that smell. They were from the country, and to the country they now returned.

The morning sun shone down on the open hills they passed, peppered with open fields and hand-dug irrigated canals, tiny people in the distance eclipsed by their sun hats, bent over, tending crop. There were animals grazing here and there: cows, horses, goats, spread out as carelessly as they spent their days, herding dogs on break, rolling in the grass. There weren’t any sheep, which were more suited to climates such as Resembool’s, far, far away and in the opposite direction from where they were headed.

Things were still hazy for Al. Even just hurtling forward in a vehicle relative to the stationery ground—a familiar, ordinary sensation—felt strange. _This body_ , technically, had never experienced inertia. This was all new to _this body_ ’s vestibular system. This unsteadiness was exemplary of how impossible it was for him to differentiate between sensations that he had forgotten how they felt, versus sensations that this new frame in which the portrait of his mind now hung had no reference for.

The only thing he was concretely registering was Ed’s hand in his, a little red spot radiating on the otherwise blue-black chart of his mental heat graph. He made a little small talk with the driver at the onset, but he could do that in his sleep. He could ask follow-up questions, identify and repeat back the one phrase the speaker was hoping he’d pick up on, and give off the impression of undivided attention, while really the division of his mind splintered off into a million little fractals. He did usually focus in earnest; there was simply too much outside information to do so now, too many sensory imbalances.

It was mostly a moot point, though. Both the driver—who, Al learned, rarely, if ever, left the grey city limits—and the passengers—cooped for months up in white, sterile medical wards—were feeling the effects of the greens and yellows around them, the blues above and browns below. The mood in the car shifted, relaxed, a languor settling in: not an unwillingness to speak, or a discomfort, but a quiet calm, subduing the want to do anything except observe the scenery passing by.

These were landscapes to look out the window and think about the bigger picture to, or think about nothing at all to, which were sometimes the same thing. He cranked down the car window and rested his head on the frame. The wind whipped in his short choppy hair, mussing it up even more than Ed had managed to with his scissors. The gust roared around his ears. He closed his eyes. He was pretty sure he was feeling exactly what dogs felt when they did this.

Finally seeing nature, something so familiar, that had grown so unfamiliar in such a short time—and that _air_ , rushing in, finding its way to their nostrils despite glass and metal and varnish—Al was sure they felt it, too. They were picking up a little speed. They were breathing easy.

The sun had traveled well past the midway point by the time the car eased up a long dirt driveway that ran far out into a field of wheatgrass. During their trip, on Ed’s part, there had been a lot of map-rotating, a bit of direction-arguing, a couple stops to fill the tank from spare gasoline cans, and one point where Ed very reluctantly had to admit they must’ve taken the wrong fork about five miles back.

Once it was clear to all involved that the path was no longer suitable for a car, and that this car was not suitable for offroading, and that there was some building now visible from where they were, Ed declared this was good enough.

The driver asked for some large amount of money, and Ed handed over some large amount of money, and clearly it was sufficient because Ed didn’t count it and neither did the driver. Al noticed this transaction mostly because it necessitated Ed having to uncurl his fingers from Al’s to dig around in the form-fitting pockets of his leather jeans. Al had no idea if the driver had noticed their handholding and simply decided to let it be, or if he had somehow managed to avert his eyes this whole time.

Briefly, he caught a glimpse of some ghastly specter sitting in the middle backseat, staring at him through the rearview mirror. It occurred to him, then, that he probably looked to outsiders like he was on his death bed, and that maybe the driver thought this was some sort of last request, and that perhaps was why the driver had held his tongue and simply made the U-turn without complaint upon his brother’s aforementioned mistake.

Al hovered a little ways away from the car, blowing in the breeze, while Ed and the driver leaned against the car, fervently talking about something the wind was carrying away from him. Ed’s eyes were narrowed, fists balled, his face twisted in an expression that most people took for annoyance, but Al understood to be deep-seated unhappiness. The driver glanced in his direction a few times, and Al politely pretended to look elsewhere.

Exchanges such as these, where some concerned adult Had A Word with his brother about him, instead of speaking to him directly, weren’t new to Al at this point. Adults really liked to express their disapproval of the situation to Ed and then proceed, it seemed, to do nothing to tangibly help. It had been that way long before Al obtained this new body. Al didn’t endorse the sort of retorts Ed came up with in these situations, but he figured that if strangers felt compelled to run their hostile assumptions by his brother, then he was at least somewhat entitled to return that hostility.

Still, on his own part, he didn’t resent the driver, or anyone else for it. He knew how he looked.

The car drove off. Ed watched it go—not really watching, Al knew—eyes half-lidded, looking far away, to somewhere nobody saw but him, using the time it took for the car to shrink into the horizon as an excuse to compose himself. He then turned to Al and, immediately, his face relaxed.

Ed confirmed with Al that he was good to walk a little bit, although it was more of a formality than anything. At this point, Ed could look at Al for a few seconds and determine whether he was really okay to walk or not. Al felt guilty that his brother had had to acquire this skill, as he had proven himself to be a thoroughly unreliable narrator in the chronicle of his own recovery, but he tried to push that aside and just think of it as a useful ability, which it was. For better or worse, his brother could read his pain pretty well now. There were still some things Al could keep to himself, though: the vertigo, the anxiety of catching his reflection, the way objects sometimes looked flat, or changed size, or just generally wouldn’t orient themselves properly in the third dimension.

Al was, of course, not allowed to carry anything, and so he’d asked if he could put on Ed’s coat so his brother would at least have one less thing to juggle. It was already oversized on Ed—Al frankly wasn’t sure why Ed wore the thing so much, as he wasn’t pleased with his height and it did absolutely nothing to help the illusion of his size, but of course Al would never say that—and it was like a blanket on a hanger, billowing off Al. But, even in the midafternoon sun he was cold, and he wrapped it around himself, the crimson fabric deep red against his pallid skin. It hadn’t fit him when he was made of armor, and it didn’t really fit him now, either, but he was happy to be able to wear it.

He’d been quite curious about where his brother would be taking them for months, but after Ed had evaded his questions for the fifth time, biting his lip, looking shyly at the floor, crossing and uncrossing his arms, even grabbing for his braid and tugging on it at one point, Al had resolved to drop it. The only thing he’d gathered was that they would be taking a break. He wished he knew more, in the event he could help prepare or plan, but Ed was clearly excited about it, and wanted it to be a surprise, and his brother needed something to look forward to a lot more than Al needed to know where he was physically going to be.

He really didn’t care where they were going: he’d given up his agency over where he existed and where he went years ago. His position on the planet wasn’t defined geographically, it was defined relative to his brother, and how near or far away he was from him. He was attached to him, not to locations. There hadn’t been a choice in the matter since their journey began when he was ten, but even now that it was over, he didn’t see any reason for that to change.

They came up on the building, and the more detail Al could see, the more his eyes widened. It was two stories, dark cedar wood, a fieldstone chimney piling up one side and a creek dribbling close along the other. The water trailed lazily off into a grove a couple acres away. He quickly ascertained the house had been built on this clearing relative to those trees, which acted as a windbreak to the easterlies following their convection cell here to the southwest. He took it in, then turned to Ed, who was short of breath from hefting all their luggage and trying not to show it, and who was appraising the house carefully.

“Is this it?” Al asked.

Ed nodded. “This is it.”

His older brother unceremoniously dropped all their things on the grass and scooped him up, carefully as not to hurt him, but still quick enough to catch him off guard.

Al gasped, even as his arms naturally found their way around Ed’s shoulders to steady himself, and then he laughed. He hadn’t been awake for it, but he knew the last time Ed carried him somewhere, it had been awful and scary and not at all the circumstances Ed would have liked to carry him under. Now, his brother intended to amend that. He met Ed’s eyes, and saw his own happiness in them. Ed half-jogged them to the front steps, made their way up them, jiggled the handle, and then kicked the door open with his foot. Al curled tight in on himself to fit through the doorway, bracing for his metal to scrape the sides, and then uncoiled once inside.

The grand foyer functioned as a great room: wide, spacious, open beams visible on underside of the roof high above, with the stone chimney being a focal point on the far wall. Rows of glass windowpanes carried warm light in and refracted into rainbows on the dark wood flooring, dust particles suspended in the still air in between. White sheets covered a number of furnishings, some of which circled a deep orange-red rug near the fireplace. The room broke off into a kitchen space extending into one corner, and next to that a long set of stairs climbed up to an overlook, a long hallway visible behind the railing.

Al thought the place was lovely. Big, quiet, nostalgic, weathered: a true country house, having withstood years of sun and open wind and snow. He did what he usually did in new situations: took in his surroundings, began forming his own opinion, then check his brother’s face for guidance as to what their consensus would be. He was very pleased; he would have _acted_ pleased no matter what, of course, knowing how eager Ed had been and how long he’d kept this under wraps, but there was no need to pretend. He turned to his brother, smiling, and then paused.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. His gaze flickered around, searching Ed’s expression, contemplating all the things that were, or could be, wrong.

Ed was squinting, thoughtfully, but moreover displeasedly. Al gave him a few seconds to brood before prompting again, “Niisan?”

Ed sighed. “It’s more run-down than I thought it’d be,” he admitted.

Al was taken aback. He looked around again. Sure, it was dusty; the sheets had oxidized and yellowed a bit; he could see a little sun damage here and there, some color fading; now that he was looking for it, he saw that a couple of the windows had cracks, one of the joists on an open beam in the vaulted ceiling had splintered, there was a rusty, exposed pipe he could just catch the tail end of in the kitchen…

He really hadn’t noticed. “I really hadn’t noticed,” he said.

Ed gave Al that _I-know-you’re-being-polite_ look he gave Al a lot: it was one of the areas they weren’t on the same wavelength about, in part due to their differing approaches to politeness. Al gave him his _I’m-not-being-polite-I’m-being-honest_ look even though it was futile, and didn’t say anything further, so Ed started.

“Okay, I’ll explain, here goes…”

“When Winry came, I don’t know, pretty early on, to the hospital I mean, before you woke up, to visit you, her and I got to talking about what you and I would do after we got out—“

“And you told her it was none of her business,” Al made an educated guess.

“—I mean, yeah, it IS none of her business, but anyway, I also asked her if she could ask Granny something for me.”

Al nodded. Ed could have phoned her directly, of course, but these days he struggled even more with asking Granny Pinako for anything than he did with asking Winry.

“I just said we’d want somewhere to go to take a break, basically, and did she have any ideas, and—hold on—“

He was still carrying Al, although they’d both more or less forgotten about their proximity to each other or what position they were in. If, during a conversation, the answer was yes to both ‘can he hear me,’ and ‘can I hear him,’ then other information tended to get discarded. As kids, they’d start wrestling, then get to talking, and still be piled on each other fifteen minutes into the discussion. Ed walked them over to one of the couch-shaped sheets, and plopped the both of them down on top of it. His brother now seated in his lap, still bundled in his coat, he continued.

During this transition, Al had been figuring that Winry would have told Ed to just come back to Resembool, and then called him an idiot, or something like that.

“So, I asked her, did she have any ideas, and she said,” and here he switched to his objectively terrible Winry voice, “‘just come back to Resembool you idiot,’ and I said no, because, because… y’know.” And that was a sentence Al could finish, too.

“Anyway, so she asked Granny, and Granny asked some clients of hers, and one of them was an old family friend who has a summer house way out west they said they’d be more than happy to let us use it for a while…” and here he inhaled, having run out of breath, and finished, “…on the condition that we—that I—fix it up before we leave.”

Al went _ooooh_ , the pieces falling together in his head.

That was another good thing about being from the country. In the cities, too many people lied, so they assigned value to currency, thereby removing the need for faith in other people. In Resembool, people stuck to their word, and so their word had worth: a perfect stranger had entrusted their home to them, and yet there really were no perfect strangers in their system. They trusted Granny, and therefore by extension trusted them, and that was enough. Whoever it was was probably their neighbor’s second cousin’s grandmother whom they’d met once at a town hall potluck or something, anyway.

It was a good arrangement. His genius of a brother could fix anything easily with alchemy. Al wasn’t sure what his own alchemical abilities were at present: he hadn’t tried yet, with his body so weakened, but he was determined to help. Even if he couldn’t do the more serious repairs, the place was desperately in need of a deep clean, and that prospect invigorated him, too. They’d moved around so much for years: he hadn’t had cause to spruce up a place or keep it nice since they had burned their own home down. He remembered well all of the detailed instructions his mother had given him, all the old-fashioned cleaning tips she swore by that she’d passed down to him when she became too weak to do it herself.

Furthermore, they were alone. For miles and miles on their trip there, Al had seen no other signs of habitation. So unlike the inns, and hostels, and train stations and streets they’d slept on. A king size mattress in the master bedroom, undoubtedly. So unlike the adjustable twin one in the hospital room. A shiver ran up Al’s back. His arms tightened of their own accord around Ed again.

Ed took this to mean understanding. “Yeah, you see, so, I’m sorry. They warned me it was a fixer-upper, but I didn’t think it’d be _this_ bad, I wanted… I don’t know, somewhere NICE for you to go… I should have found somewhere better.”

Al knew his brother didn’t like being laughed at. But the big, sincere pout on his face after having set up something this wonderful—his open moping because yeah, he got them a vacation house, but there were a few _water stains_ here and there—was making it very hard not to. Poor brother, Al thought. To be so thoughtful, and then to think so little of himself.

“I think it’s perfect,” Al stated. “It’s the opposite of the hospital,” thereby conceding that it was big, and homey, and a welcome change, but also dusty, and not as well upkept.

“Yeah,” Ed had to agree. “Anywhere but there.”

Al knew he wasn’t going to get through to his brother about this right now. Ed felt better with actions: he’d perk up once they began working on improving the space. But, there was an action Al could take right now to cheer him up. He closed the short distance between his lips and Ed’s cheek, and softly planted a kiss there.

His brother hesitated for a moment, feeling it was undeserved, weighing his options for responding, yet ultimately unable to resist. Al felt Ed’s shoulders drop, a little of the tension built up in there being let go.

Ed was quiet, then, out of explanations or excuses for the moment. He turned to face Al, who was still hovering by his jaw. His warm brown eyes met Al’s directly for the first time since they’d walked in. Eyes that Al had looked into a million times, and yet that wasn’t nearly enough. He saw something indefinite, something infinite in there. Brilliant golden flecks, far more precious than the metal itself. Then, Ed gently turned his head, and slowly, slowly, placed his lips on his brother’s.


	3. Chapter 3

The more Al explored the place, the more pleased he was with it. It was well-stocked, fully-equipped: there were plenty of nonperishables and canned goods still in storage; all the basic utensils and supplies were on hand, and then some; no shortage of linens, or washbasins, or anything else a newly-reborn soul might need to make a nest for his notoriously famous older brother.

Said older brother was currently ass-up, making displeased noises inside the sink cabinet, and then hitting his head on the cold water supply line as he ducked out. Al continued opening and inspecting the contents of every shelf and cupboard, of which there were plenty.

He was very excited to cook. He’d had a few opportunities here and there to bake, or to help out in other people’s kitchens, but that had always meant following instructions to a T and then metaphorically biting his nails as Ed tried it, since he couldn’t taste or even smell it for himself. Ed always assured him it was good—and it probably was fine, to him, his brother was a bit of a goat—but he could experiment now! The cooler Ed had lugged all the way out here had turned out to contain eggs, milk, a very motley assortment of spices and other things (Ed had tried his best at the farmer’s market). Al had also been made aware there was a lake nearby they could fish at, and certainly there was game to be hunted…

He could hardly remember ever having so many materials all to himself. He was fine owning few possessions, being able to move on and follow his brother at a moment’s notice. But, nevertheless, at least right then, it was immensely gratifying.

Al heard an exasperated sigh, a clap, and then the sound of water making its way down the line.

“Thanks,” Al said, because Ed was scowling.

“I _wanted_ to do it the _normal_ way, I should be able to do basic shit like this…”

“Well, were you ever taught how?” It was a subtle jab at their absentee father, since Al knew Ed would respond to that, although he had no idea if their dad had any sort of handyman capabilities whatsoever.

“…No.”

“So then why should you know how?”

Ed rolled his eyes to signify he got the message.

Ed was a hypocrite. He’d made Al stand down while he pushed himself much too far during the recovery from his automail installation. It had caused Al a lot of grief, and a lot of conflict between them, but Ed was so stubborn he wouldn’t budge on the subject even while shaking, crumpled over, hot tears rolling down his face blotched red with pain during physical therapy.

That was the reason he had such impressive keloids scaling up from his prosthetic sockets in great red-purple bubbles. Scar tissue like that was in no way a necessary evil of automail: it was his body’s way of screaming at him to stop moving while it desperately tried to repair itself, and him not listening, and so now he had great patches of itchy inelastic tissue forever. Al’s gaze kept flickering down to where the ones on his thigh were concealed, while Ed told him to put the cleaning supplies back, to relax, that he wasn’t going to be doing any work.

“They didn’t even _ask_ us to clean, all I have to do is fix the damages, there’s no reason for you to— _stop_ looking at my leg, Al, yes, I get it, okay?”

Their attempt at Al doing his first transmutation hadn’t gone well. Alchemy took a certain kind of energy—not entirely physical, or mental, but closely linked to both—and Al knew as soon as he put his hands down that he didn’t have it right now. His stomach lurched; the circle had barely lit up before he lifted his fingers and, trying not to vomit, declared they should try a little later on, which Ed had zero qualms with. Therefore, at least for now, Al would tidy up.

“Niisan, I’m not doing it for _them_ , I’m doing it for _me_. I _like_ things to be clean. It’ll look _nicer_.” Al had to say it was for _him_ , instead of for _us_ , otherwise Ed would hark on about it. “I’ll mop the floors, and you’ll see.”

Ed gave him a look. He’d sucked at mopping as a kid, and hated it, and one time after their mom had praised Al for how well he did it, Ed had thrown a bucket of dirty water at him after she left the room. Which Al had also cleaned up. His little brother always knew right when to throw in the childhood guilt.

Ed got all the repairs done—either by hand at great effort, or by alchemy with much less—before the sun was down. Then, Al went around slowly, surveying, and found plenty his brother must have either overlooked or done unsatisfactorily. He took notes and reported his audit to Ed, whose expression quickly sunk into one indistinguishable from that of a four-year-old who was just told cleaning his room consists of more than putting three blocks away.

Many people found Ed’s lack of a poker face to be off-putting, but Al thought it was endearing. His brother wore his heart, and his mind, and everything else on his sleeve. Al wasn’t halfway through his list before he stopped, folded the paper into his pocket, and told Ed not to worry about it. They’d deal with it tomorrow.

Al was eager to see the lake, and so they left through the back porch and headed out into the fields, casting elongated shadows over the wheatgrass. The world was losing saturation, turning faded oranges, purples and blues. It would be dark before they returned, but they could tell by the clearness of the sky and the closeness of the low-hanging moon that they’d have enough starlight to find their way back. They followed the creek upstream, towards the grove of maples and alders.

The crickets were just beginning to chirp, and the frogs to croak, serenading the night for reasons too big and too old for them to understand. That compulsion to vocalize, to reach others, to make that connection: Al sympathized with it. He felt it too, having been restricted to communicating through the echoes in his armored shell, having neither facial expressions nor human touch with which to make himself comprehensible. A whale—and he’d felt as big as one, sometimes—trapped, singing at a frequency others couldn’t hear. Only his brother really understood his vibrations. He didn’t even have to say anything at all.

The trees really were like a windbreak—they ran much further vertically than horizontally, and it wasn’t long before they reached a clearing near the far end of the grove, where they could see the beginning of the lake from. It was small, and still, and even in the weak last light of the evening, Al could see pebbles and stones resting beneath the water on its shore. Its tributary connected at the side opposite from where they were, burbling quietly, barely disturbing the surface where it brought water in.

Ed looked at Al to confirm his own emotions, as he often did. Upon seeing that Al was happy too, he tossed off his shoes, jogged up to the edge of the water, and then into it, shin-deep, soaking his pants legs. He stood there for a long pause, as one does when determining water temperature, as though waiting, just in case the temperature decides to change.

Then, he nodded, satisfied. “Water’s good.”

Lakes in Resembool got cold in the fall and stayed cold well into early summer, holding onto the winter frost and frozen soil below, deep in shadow, where spring couldn’t get to it. That hadn’t stopped them as kids, of course, but Al was grateful that it wasn’t like that here: the long exposure to direct sunlight had warmed the lake right up, heat from the long day held into the night.

It was still too cold for Al—goosebumps raised all over his skin the minute he dipped his toes in—but, having also reached the verdict of Water’s Good, they wasted no further time in stripping. Ed carelessly flung everything off until he was down to his boxer shorts, and then hesitated with his hands on the waistband, waiting for Al to catch up, which Al found very funny. His brother was so carefree about clotheslessness right up until he wasn’t. It wasn’t like this light-blue, well-worn pair of boxers he wore around the Rockbells exactly obfuscated everything. Although if anybody other than Al realized it, they didn’t say anything, either. Al pretended not to notice his brother’s pause, and let his own pants slide easily off his hips, folding them before setting them on the ground. Underwear followed suit, then he pulled his shirt over his head.

He continued to pretend to not notice when his brother still kept staring.

Ed had seen plenty of him in the hospital, but not in a good way. Al had always been torn between whether sparing the nurses or sparing Ed was more merciful during his phase of incontinence. But, Ed was the one who’d been doing it before he woke up, and so it continued to be Ed changing out his absorbent pads and wiping him down for a period of time after he woke up as well. It had been difficult to come to terms with the embarrassment and indignity of it, which his brother had repeatedly told him to shut up and stop apologizing about, and to stop making that face—look, if I’M not making a face why the hell should YOU get to—and generally took in such stride that Al had eventually folded into resignation, and then, finally, acceptance. It was medical caregiving, and just like everything else in that field, you compartmentalized it.

So, this was different. This was new.

Al couldn’t tell exactly where Ed was staring, but it definitely wasn’t too close to his face.

“Looking at my new scars?” Al asked.

Ed shook his head, braid following closely thereafter. “Yes,” he lied, and then kicked off his own last piece of clothing.

Al grinned. “Let me take your hair down.”

The muted breeze that managed to make it through to the clearing was pleasant. Al stepped behind Ed, gently pulled out the band at the bottom of his braid, slipped it on his wrist, and then began working his fingers through Ed’s hair. It was a simple, neat braid, one of Winry’s. It really didn’t warrant someone else taking it out, but Al wasn’t about to pass up a perfectly good opportunity to look at his brother’s backside and spread that beautiful golden hair across his soft, warm, naked shoulders. It had grown out; Al still needed to cut it. He played with Ed’s hair long after any sort of straightening or sorting was going on, and Ed was very still, as if any sudden movement might stop the hands against his scalp.

Al stepped closer, then, pressing his chest to Ed’s back, leaned in, and took a big sniff at the nape of his neck.

Ed chuckled then, and gently tried to pull away, but Al had his arms around him now. “Al,” Ed said. Not _stop_ or _come on_ or _don’t_ , even jokingly, just Al. It was worth it to get a whiff of that concentrated Ed smell Al loved so much. Ed had twisted around to face him, and Al lunged in as if to do the same again, but instead began planting little kisses up and down the top of Ed’s shoulder, which made Ed audibly go “ _ah_.” And he became still again. And so Al’s kisses became slower, more lingering, more thoughtful. More passionate. His tongue slipped out against Ed’s neck. And Ed went “ _ah_ ” again.

His brother was vocal when they could afford to be. Which, had been hardly ever on their travels.

It had driven Al crazy in the past, leaning over Ed to palm him on the train, blocking outsider’s views with his metal shell, his brother forgetting to breathe in the effort to not make any sound. Or sneaking olive oil from some lodge kitchen in his hand back to their room to more properly satisfy him, working a couple big fingers into Ed’s clamped-shut mouth for saliva when it ran out, Ed red-faced, whimpering so quietly Al couldn’t stand it. In moments like that, he personally didn’t care if they woke the whole inn up.

They couldn’t afford it then. They could afford it now. They could afford it for the next month, if they wanted to.

Al licked along Ed’s skin, tasting the flavor of the scent that filled his head with desires too vast to ever be satiated.

“Al…” Ed said again, with a much different inflection this time. He put his hands on Al’s sides, signaling for him to pull back for a minute, which Al was fine with—he wanted to see something. He met his brother’s eyes, then pointedly looked down to his older brother’s half-mast dick, and then looked back up.

“Yes?” he said, big doe eyes.

Ed forgot his line. There was some conflict going on in his brother’s brain, Al knew this—when was there ever _not_ —but Ed made the mistake of looking at Al’s lips, and Al seized that as as good an invitation as any to help his brother get over it by sticking his tongue in his mouth. He worked his hands through Ed’s hair again, this time to pull him in. Al stepped closer one last time, bringing them completely flush, and his height made it so that his brother’s cock slotted nicely between his thighs. His other hand wrapped around Ed’s lower back, encouraging his hips forward, and Ed _moaned_.

Al had tried exactly three times to get Ed to do stuff with him in the hospital, but after the third time Ed removed Al’s IV-injected hand from his crotch and _held it sweetly_ , the worst brush off of them all, Al had given up. He figured he just looked too pathetic to be desirable. He got paranoid that whenever Ed went to go relieve himself or take a shower at a place down the street, he was secretly cranking one out… in the busy, public restroom or at the busy, public bathhouse. Somehow. Al knew he was supposed to be like, the sweet, innocent adolescent, so fragile, so delicate, to be handled like a newborn baby bird, but frankly the stink of his greasy unshowered 16-year-old brother loudly chewing on a turkey leg in his hospital room had been making him horny but no one wanted to hear about it. He didn’t care that he had chronic vague undefinable abdominal pains—he was still newly-addled with hormones, and the morphine and hydrocodone had been making him hornier, to be honest.

Ed appeared to be just fine with his advances now, at any rate. Al’s fingers twisted and pulled his brother’s hair with all the force of months of pent-up denial. His brother’s hips were rutting against Al’s of their own accord, Ed’s lower body following some innate instinct to hump whatever was pressing around its dick. Al only wished his legs could provide more friction; they hardly met with his feet together. Ed was whimpering into his mouth, going through some sort of pent-up response of his own.

Al had reduced Ed to a different sort of mess in the hospital with his absence, and now here he was, doing it again with his presence. Reducing Ed to a mess.

“Al, I’m—“ Al recognized that intonation. His brother was not a marathon runner.

“Wait! Wait!” Al exclaimed, pulling back, sounding really worried.

“What! What!” Ed replied, abruptly snapped out of his pleasure, worked up in a frenzy.

“In my mouth, niisan. You promised.”

Ed didn’t have the faculty to hide the betrayal on his face. Blue-balling of this caliber was a serious crime. The jury in his mind was observing the prosecution/logical part of his brain present evidence that he had, indeed, promised, against his defense/animal brain, which said How Could You. He looked about as grave as an older brother who is considerably shorter than you, with more baby fat on his cheeks than you, butt-naked and with a slowly lowering erection, can look.

“Please?” Al prompted.

“…Do you really wanna do this here? Where it’s dirty, and it’s gonna get colder? I sorta figured our, y’know, when we did this, our first time, it would be in a big bed or something… I want you to be comfortable,” Ed said, like he hadn’t been thigh fucking Al thirty seconds ago.

“Niisan, if we go in the water tonight, and the shower at the house isn’t working yet, then I would prefer to not have to lick lake scum off of your penis.”

Ed snorted. He was sixteen, after all, and it was always funny to hear Al say words that one wouldn’t expect to hear come out of his mouth.

“Okay, but you first. I’m getting you off first,” Ed declared, like he hadn’t been thigh fucking Al forty-five seconds ago.

Al allowed himself to act like his older brother, for one brief moment, and rolled his eyes.

A couple minutes later, Ed was vaguely confused, but mostly aroused. He had somehow been coaxed to lower himself to the floor, lie back on his elbows, and now Al was hovering between his inner thighs, looking pleased by how much they gave when he squeezed them. His dick had made a full recovery.

“Al,” Ed said, more earnestly. “Come on, you can finally experience stuff like this…”

Al kissed along the skin he had been groping, moving inward.

“Hh,” Ed continued, “You’ve waited so long, you should be the priority…”

Al’s mouth reached the junction of Ed’s thigh with his groin, and he paused for a second there, exhaling hot air.

“God…” Ed went on, “When we were kids, you’d just barely started… _god_ , you’ve hardly gotten there in your entire life.”

Al kissed the soft, hot skin there. Ed’s dick twitched and slapped gently against Al’s cheek.

“Al,” Ed concluded.

Al considered just continuing on, but the way Ed’s eyebrows crinkled together made him stop. If his brother needed reassurance, then that was that. He’d give it.

“I want you,” Al said simply. “Do you want me?”

Ed looked wary, like it was a trick question. “Yeah.”

“I love you. Do you love me?”

Ed’s expression softened, then. His cock did not. “Yeah.”

“Then let me decide what I want. Okay, niisan?”

“……Okay.”

Al didn’t really know what he was doing, but acting confident seemed to be a good start, and so that’s what he did. Ed wasn’t big, but neither was Al’s mouth, so it worked out. Still, he looked a whole lot bigger than Al was used to: this wasn’t anything like the first time he’d pinched his big thumb and two fingers around Ed’s little guy shortly after he became armor, Ed being understandably flaccid, both of them highly nervous and unhelpfully jumpy about pressure-related mishaps.

Al could _grip_ now. He could _squeeze_. He didn’t know Ed’s dick was this _hot_ , shaft throbbing with heat, swollen with blood, 99º precum generously bubbling over. The flushed bright red skin at the tip, appearing and disappearing inside a hole as Al used Ed’s foreskin to fuck his glans.

He could masturbate his brother all day, though, this was nothing new—he was just working up his appetite. Enjoying Ed’s whimpers when he picked up speed, Ed’s toes curling when he twisted his wrist right where he already knew to twist. Al’s salivary glands were doing what they were supposed to do: making lubricant when something tasty was in sight. The more he stared at it, the more he was endeared by it—it was so _cute_ at this angle, at this size, so eager, so ready to be put in something. It wanted to be put in _him_. He kissed it lovingly on the head a few times.

Ed was a slightly innervated by the ravenous way Al was laser focused in on his hard-on now, but maybe it had always been like that before and he simply hadn’t been able to see it, so he didn’t say anything. He didn’t _say_ anything, but he sure made noises when Al came out of whatever dick-worshipping ritual had possessed him and, without further ceremony, turned his chaste kissing into an actual blowjob.

Al had no idea if he was actually doing good, although the sounds coming from his older brother would have sold anybody on his dick sucking abilities. Ed’s elbows were shaking, wanting to buckle and lay back, to give up on anything that took effort except getting off, to get rid of any sensation that wasn’t pleasure. But, he also really, really, really wanted to watch, and that won out.

After a little bit of gagging, and resting of tongue positions, and cheek hollowing, Al was able to take his brother’s cock all the way. He proceeded to give it the fullest extent of his throat, over and over and over. It was loving the attention—his brother’s hips kept jerking up of their own accord to meet him on his way down, smushing Al’s nose upon contact, so Al held Ed’s hips down, which just made Ed want to jerk up harder.

He was being so _loud_. 

“Fucking _hell_ , Al, fuck, ahhhhh [sucking in air] oh God, Al, I [unintelligible] ah, _oh_ , do that, yes, yes, wait, a little bit—yes, hhhhh, ah, fuck” he wasn’t very articulate.

He guided Al, told him what felt good, disjointedly but encouragingly, which Al appreciated: they’d ended up doing the same when Al had first undertaken the task of figuring out how to help his brother, who was on bedrest and had two stumps wrapped in gauze at the time, get off. No need to take offense or feel bad for needing instructions: Al hadn’t been taught, so why should he know? They figured it out together.

Al’s neck kind of hurt, and the lake soil was rough on his knees, and his brother was _still_ not taking the hint to stop bucking his hips and inconveniencing Al—which was sort of hot, admittedly—but those were all distant background sensations compared to his brother’s sounds in his ears, and his brother’s musk in his nose, and his brother’s skin in his hands, and his brother’s rock hard cock sliding on his tongue, hitting the back of his throat. All five of the senses he’d been given by Ed, now focused only on him.

“Okay, for real, this time—“ Ed panted out. Al nodded around his dick, signaling he understood. Ed really did lay back, squeezed his eyes shut, unable to take it anymore. “I’m gonna cum soon, Al, I’m gonna cum—“

And then Ed grabbed Al’s headand forced it down and fucked himself with it.

He was thrusting so frantically, sweat on his midriff slapping against Al’s forehead—it was overwhelming, and unexpected, and intense, and Al made a noise of surprise around Ed’s dick, which just stimulated him more. Then Ed’s voice was breaking, his whole body tensing up, and there was a pulsating in Al’s mouth. A suspended moment while his orgasm culminated, peaking—then Ed cried out, three thick ropes of cum hitting Al’s throat as far back as they could. Ed’s body instinctively planting sperm as deep inside the warm wet hole it was in as possible, to make sure the pregnancy would take. His brother’s reproductive system desperately trying to breed him.

Ed had flopped back and gone limp—he always became a ragdoll after a good orgasm—and Al pulled off him with a pop, trying to swish the jizz back up.

Afterwards, Al usually moved to press his cool metal body against Ed’s sweaty flesh one, or to cuddle him, or at least hold his hand. So when that didn’t happen, Ed opened his eyes, still catching his breath, craned his neck, and looked down at Al.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Al looked thoughtful. Then he met Ed’s gaze and swallowed meaningfully. He winced.

“Niisan… that tastes pretty bad.”

Ed looked guilty. “Yeahh.”

“That’s why you dodged the question when I said I was excited to taste it.” Citing a conversation that had been years ago.

“Yeah.”

Al narrowed his eyes. “So you _had_ tasted it.”

“…Al, every guy tries their own—at least once—look, yeah, it’s nasty, you just looked so eager at the time. I’m sorry.”

Al wiped his mouth. There were a lot of fluids, not his, on his face. The aftertaste was strong.

“You have to kiss me, still.”

“Are you kidding, of course, c’mere.”

Ed made grabby hands. Al laughed. He crawled over to Ed and leaned over him, and his brother pulled his head down again, this time gently, and lovingly. He worked his tongue into Al’s mouth, cleaning it out for him, swapping out their spit, not caring in the slightest how much Al’s face smelled like his crotch. Ed was shiny with sweat, his overgrown bangs were stuck to his face, his legs were splayed, and his eyebrows were knitted again, but this time with pleasure, and good feelings, and love. Al treasured getting to see him like that, because absolutely no one else ever did, and Al sort of hoped no one else ever would.

The two of them lay on the lake bank, side by side, looking up. The stars were out in full force, now: thousands of them, spread out in and around Orion and the Pleiades directly above.

Ed wasn’t fully recovered, but his hands were already trailing further down Al’s body, headed for their obvious destination.

“Niisan, let’s wash off. Let’s get in the water.”

“No, later, you’re not getting out of it this time.”

“Niisan, it’s dirty out here, and getting colder. I want my first time to be in a big bed, or something… I want to be comfortable.”

Ed closed his eyes. He took a deep breath in, held it, and then exhaled. They understood a lot of things about each other, but as an older sibling, the mechanisms of the little sibling mind were incomprehensible to him.

It was pretty simple to Al. The enjoyment he would get from being pleasured by his brother didn’t outweigh the self-satisfaction he was getting from making him hold out a little longer right now. Ed had had plenty of chances in the hospital—yes, Al was still just a little bit bitter—and since Ed hadn’t taken them, Al figured he was justified in deciding when and how they would be refamiliarized with his body now.

This was all over Ed’s head, of course. He made one last grab for Al, and Al took his hand and _held it sweetly_. Ed squinted into outer space. Al could hear the gears turning in the skull next to his, and then they stalled. He couldn’t do it. Too hard to figure it out. Both mentally hard, and physically hard.

After a short silence, Al rolled himself up to a sitting position, and started trying to stand, which prompted Ed to hop up and help him up. Al felt dizzy—his circulation was very poor—but he made his way to the water, bearing through his swimming vision until he was submerged up to his midsection.

That was the way they had done it in Resembool, when they made the long trek out to the lake with Winry in the summers—you _had_ to immediately get past crotch height, or you’d hem and haw forever. The water had definitely lost heat while they had been distracted. The shiver that ran through Al was enough to make a splash around him, but his head immediately felt cooler and clearer.

He heard Ed sucking in air as he trudged out to meet him: his brother ran very warm, which meant staying in the water was easier, but the larger temperature difference made the initial adjustment feel more drastic. His body’s urgent attempts to re-achieve homeostasis by constricting his hot-blooded veins had always caused him a lot of shrinkage, which Al thought was cute, Ed not so much.

Al went out further, then, up to his shoulders, and Ed followed.

It was cold and refreshing. They were washing off the last remnants of the hospital, and the day’s long journey in a compact car, and dried bodily fluids, too. Ed ducked under, submerging his head, and resurfaced with the upper half of his face entirely concealed by bangs. Unable to see, he started making his way approximately in Al’s direction. Al giggled and tried to maneuver out of Ed’s trajectory, which just gave away his position more.

They went around like that, Ed trying to catch Al, until Al ducked under and things went quiet for a minute. Ed was just starting to get worried when Al came up behind him, reemerged with a splash, and hoisted Ed’s legs out from under him, catching him in a bridal carry.

Ed laughed, and smushed his bangs back against his forehead, where they stuck.

“Is that okay?” he quickly asked.

Al nodded. Ed’s body weight wasn’t quite enough to compensate for his automail leg, he would sink if not supported, but he was still plenty light and holdable in the water.

“Probably the only way I’ll ever be able to carry you now,” Al noted, smiling sadly.

“You carried me plenty before, it’s my turn to get to now,” Ed returned.

It was true. He had picked Ed up a _lot_ while he was able to. Ed had even taken some of his impressively long naps inside Al’s body, while Al continued walking them toward wherever it was they were headed at the time. Al would have to spend _days_ being carried before it would equal out timewise.

The human body was designed to just barely float, to displace just enough weight using oxygen and suspension of body fat to stay on the surface, and so Ed’s 20-pound deadweight metal leg and Al’s extremely thin frame did not lend very well to actual swimming. But Al at least could do it, Ed couldn’t at all.

They moved through the water around the lake, following its perimeter, and found a small crudely-made dock at one end. There was some other driftwood by it, and Ed did something he’d figured to do the second time they’d been on Yock Island: find a sizable, flat piece, hook his left leg over it, lie back, and then ta-da, he could float. He propelled himself out further into the lake, and Al followed in an easy breaststroke. It was a little dangerous; on the list of Ed’s priorities, self-preservation was somewhere near the bottom. But Al knew how much his brother hated being prevented from doing things because of his disability, and Al didn’t _want_ him to be prevented, either, so he let certain things slide.

They neared the lake’s center, and Al flipped to his back too, their heads next to each other and their bodies laid out in opposite directions.

In the onsetting stillness, the lake became a mirror. The water was a black void encompassing them, its reflection creating an unbroken continuation of stars up above running through them below. With the nightlife muted under the surface, Al could hear only the rushing in his submerged ears, could feel only his brother’s heartbeat beside him. They were floating in the nothingness of the universe. Ed’s hair spread out like a halo around him, antigravity, glowing in the moonlight.

Al felt good. He had always been suspended, drifting, willing to follow his brother further and further into deep space, where no one else could go. He’d been that way ever since he was ten, when his brother had built them a rocket ship to take them far away from their mother’s funeral, to find her and bring her back. And then it exploded when they were too far out to return. So, with nothing else to hold on to, they’d held on to each other, and kept going.

Everything had become a mere pinprick in Al’s vision with time, the longer they spent out there. It all seemed impossibly distant, too unattainable to matter. Everything tethered to the physical plane, everything material, everything he couldn’t relate to anymore. Everything except his brother, who seemed to go on forever, who Al had begun to suspect _was_ the universe, as far as he was concerned. Everything except his brother, and the parts of his body ripped from him in the blast, out there, somewhere.

As it naturally does in space, time bent. Al had no concept of its passage, no idea how long they stayed like that, other than the temperature around him slowly counting down to absolute zero.

Eventually, their heads drifted together.

There was no need for _I love you,_ or _I feel good,_ or _I’m happy you’re here with me_ , or _you mean everything to me,_ or _I don’t want this to end_. There was no combination of words that could solve an infinite equation, but that was fine.

They knew.

They made their way back through the blackness, dripping, listening to their other senses when they couldn’t see their bare feet. Al was still naked save for Ed’s coat trembling on his shoulders as he clung it around him, Ed carrying the rest of their clothes under his arm, also nude and perfectly warm. It wasn’t like anyone was going to see them, it wasn’t worth getting their clothes damp, and moreover, it was a bit exhilarating. They were worn out by the long day, but in good spirits.

Ed fumbled for the light switch as they fell through the back door, and Al made a beeline to the closest cabinet he recalled there being towels in. He was _brrr_ ing, teeth chattering as he tossed a couple of them to Ed, and wrapped an oversized one around himself, rubbing his skin with urgency. They’d dried off a good bit on the way back, but he was cold in his bones.

“Maybe it was a bad idea to go skinny dipping on your first day out of the hospital,” Ed said, wringing his waterlogged hair with one of the towels.

“It was a good idea and you know it,” Al quipped, coldly. “ _Fold_ the clothes, niisan, please,” he added, as Ed had dropped them on the floor still in a ball.

Ed got that _you’re-not-my-mom_ look on his face, which always then shifted into his _okay-you’re-kinda-my-mom_ face, and then he bent every piece of clothes in half and made a pile on the edge of the couch, and Al made his _I-can’t-believe-I-raised-you-like-this_ face. Chore completed and body dry, he stepped into his boxers. Al followed suit, slipping his underwear back on. He then opened their suitcase and put on the thick white cable knit sweater Ed had bought him a couple months ago. The hospital gown was a mandatory outfit, so he’d only been able to try it on once before; it was extremely soft and warm against his delicate skin now. It was big on him, as tended to be the case with rail-thin people. The sleeves covered most of his hands, and the hem just reached the top of his bare thighs.

His older brother was staring at him again. This had always been a common occurrence.

“What do you think, do you like it? I got it as a gift,” Al teased, turning around, looking over his shoulder, arms curled in.

“Yes,” Ed answered. He didn’t have a good comeback. He just looked some more until Al got out his light gray sweatpants and eased them up over his pale legs.

Ed coughed and then, as offhandedly as he knew how to, mentioned “I brought some of that soup out, if that sounds okay, it’s in one of those jars in the cooler.”

This surprised Al. Not that his brother was hungry, that was a universal constant, but that he’d had the foresight to bring dinner out so Al wouldn’t have to make it. There was a café on the street adjacent from the medical plaza, and upon Ed bringing back leftovers, one of their recipes had turned out to agree with Al’s stomach. Ed had then taken it upon himself to march down there and bother the waitstaff for takeout, which they didn’t do. So then he came back with his own container, ordered the soup, dumped it in, and marched back once more. Regularly, he had done this. He must have been there first thing in the morning pestering them about it on the day of Al’s discharge. When Al questioned Ed about how the cafe workers responded to this, Ed had helpfully informed him, “Whatever.”

“I’ll heat it up, then,” Al replied. It _was_ ‘whatever’ at this point, he supposed. “Do you want something a little more filling with that?”

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“Oh, I wish we had bread… maybe I’ll make some tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.”

“You know what? We could put rice in it. That’d work.”

“I’m fine.”

“Or you could just have it on the side, if that sounds better.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll make some rice.”

It was decided, then.

Ed ate a metric ton of rice, of course. For someone his size, he could really put it away. It was like he burned with the intensity of the sun for short periods of time, putting out massive amounts of energy, hot in both temperature and temperament. Then he sizzled out, ate like a horse and slept like a rock, trying to make up for the expenditure. He hadn’t been feeding himself right during Al’s initial recovery, but Al had gotten him back on track, stretched his shrunken stomach out.

It was imperative, Al felt, to be careful with how he acted about meals around Ed. He needed Ed to eat, to have the curve of his brother’s convex waistline fill in the gap for his concave one. It brought him a sort of vicarious happiness he desperately craved, since he didn’t crave food; it was fulfilling, when he couldn’t comfortably feel full. Ed’s food intake had been for Al’s sake when he was made of armor, and it was still for his sake now.

The steaming food melted the last lingering chill inside Al. He felt genuinely warm. His brother was foolish for eating piping hot soup half-naked, but Al wasn’t about to protest getting to see him visibly get just a little bit rounder at the waist. Ed could stay at that level of dressed for their whole vacation and he’d have zero complaints—and he just might, actually, Al realized. For someone as intrinsically warm-blooded as Ed, clothes were more of a formality than anything. As aforementioned, those light-blue boxers of his were threadbare: when seated or lying down, the fabric settled and conformed well to the shape beneath it; they were translucent if the light ran through them; the fly hole was loose from how often it had been yanked open, and the leg holes were far wider than his thighs, offering a ridiculous amount of opportunity for slippage. It was great.

They wrapped up their meal. Al didn’t know what time it was—it felt like the middle of the night, with it so quiet and so dark out, the only light from warm incandescent bulbs, but it could have been 9 or it could have been 2. The grandfather and wall clocks Al had discovered earlier were definitely off, so the only watch they had was Ed’s timepiece, and Al wasn’t about to ask Ed to check that. It didn’t really matter. Whatever it was, it was nearing bedtime.

He looked around, at Ed’s terrible folding job, and the dishes, and the half-spilled suitcase on the floor, and the unwashed towels. It could wait, it could all wait. For once, they had time. It was a wonderful thing to have.

Al leaned on the table and rubbed between Ed’s shoulderblades, and he let out a hum of contentedness. His brother’s appetite would be sated for the next four to six hours, and then he’d still sleep for four to six more, and then be ravenous again when he woke up. Al found it charming that his very complicated person of a brother was so heavily dependent upon and influenced by such basic needs, such basic attention. An insanely powerful alchemist with the world behind him, who liked grilled cheese and being tucked in for naps and getting kissed on the forehead and told he was good.

 _He’s just a kid_ , thought fifteen-year-old Al.

They used water from the kitchen sink—the only working water line, at present—to brush their teeth, and then flicked off the downstairs lights. They headed up the stairs, buzzing with the excitement of going to bed.

Ed had nodded off holding his little brother’s hand many times, leaning extremely uncomfortably over the hospital bed, but Al had made him move to the chair before he strained his back. He’d begged the nurses so many times, tearing up at one point, to bring his brother a cot. But they never seemed to have any to spare, as they were in short supply, and given to family members of ICU/NICU patients and the elderly first.

Fortunately, Ed was a world-class sleeper, with five years’ experience of seated napping in various positions at various locations on his resume. He didn’t mind that much, but Al did. Al kept telling Ed to go to the hotel next door, and Ed kept responding like hell I’d go to the hotel next door, and Al couldn’t do much about it except pout, and even then he couldn’t out-pout his brother.

They made their way to the end of the hall, to the master bedroom, and Al, who had paid better attention to its layout and was thus more oriented, made his way over to the bedside lamp and clicked it on. It wasn’t very strong; the heady lampshade cast the room in a moody, low orange.

The bedframe was massive, varnished antique oak, ornate carvings in the headboard and footboard, embroidered beige coverlet and white silk linens, buttoned bolster, followed by accent pillows, followed by decorative pillows, followed by decorative shams, and then two king pillows, in traditionally arranged fashion. Ed threw all the dumb pillows on the floor.

It wasn’t sanitary to bring dried lake water into the bed, nor was it sanitary to use sheets that had lain unwashed for months. But it was fine for tonight, Al thought. Tomorrow, tomorrow. They pulled back the dusty coverlet to reveal the duvet, which looked clean enough. In its grandiose, the bed was also very tall—Ed had to sort of vault on to it, and then he held the covers up for Al to crawl under.

They were both marveling at how big it was, wiggling around, feeling it, in awe of how much _space_ there was. Ed went “woww,” Al went “ooh.” They giggled. They submerged themselves completely under the sheets, to visually inspect the white expanse. It was definitely the biggest bed they’d been in, and it was the first one they’d bodily been in together in five years! They rolled around. Al could tell Ed was enjoying rubbing the soft sheets against his bare front side. His own sweater was hiked up a bit when his brother grabbed his waist, pulled him backwards, and pressed Al’s back to his chest, slotting up against him. From Ed’s chest to Al’s ribcage, Ed’s stomach to Al’s lumbar spine, to where their hips synched up their heights, to two legs bent against the backs of his thighs, one cool metal, the other warm skin. His brother was so, so warm. Al’s very own personal space heater.

Al could have cried. He finally wasn’t big. He’d never wanted to be big. Little brothers weren’t meant to be that big. He’d always felt little. And now, at last, at long last, he was. He could be little spoon.

Ed stuck his hand under Al’s sweater, and softly traced his fingers along Al’s stomach. He lingered there, his chest expanding and contracting against Al’s backside, his breath hitting Al’s neck.

Al didn’t want to ruin the moment, but his happiness emboldened him to say what he’d wanted to say.

“I’m happy you’re okay with touching me now, niisan.”

Ed’s hand froze, but he didn’t withdraw it. Al felt it curl into a fist for a moment, and then loosen.

“I wanted to, Al. Once you started getting better. It just seemed kinda weird to, I dunno, put you in that position, while you were recovering.”

Al _wished_ his brother had put him in some positions, all right. “I made it pretty clear I wanted you to, too.”

“Yeah, you did. I knew. I was just…” he didn’t know what to say. There was nothing he could say he had done for Al’s sake in this situation that hadn’t really ultimately been to spare him guilt. “…I felt bad. About everything. I’m your older brother.”

That’s what Ed said when he couldn’t explain himself well. It was sort of funny, considering all the traditionally _un-_ brotherly things they did. As a younger sibling, the mechanisms of the big sibling mind were incomprehensible to him. But Al understood he meant something by it, anyway.

He decided to push the envelope a bit further. “Niisan, did you… when you left the room to go to the bathroom, or the bathhouse, did you…” Al was having trouble with this. It had been bothering him for so long. “Did you get yourself off?”

“What? No,” Ed quickly said, completely off guard. “Well, I mean… no.”

“Well you mean no what?”

“No, I didn’t. Do that,” Ed said, but he was slumping in on himself, ever so slightly.

“So you just didn’t get off for three months,” Al pressed, incredulously.

“No, I… ugh,” Ed stopped, tried to roll away, but Al snagged his hand and kept him where he was. He had _just_ been granted his spoon status, he wasn’t about to let Ed choose to end it.

“Niisan,” Al continued, softening his voice to balance out the hard chagrin in Ed’s tone, “it’s okay. It’s fine now, I just wanted to know. That’s all.”

“No, that’s not it, I really didn’t,” Ed said. “I—…“

Al gripped his hand. He had just wanted to tease Ed about it for a minute, and then he’d be over it, but Ed was so sensitive. He supposed he’d have to talk Ed down now, reassure him for a while.

“I just did it while you were sleeping.”

Al ungripped his hand. Ed sounded insanely disappointed with himself.

“You… really?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“I mean… it was a few times…”

“You masturbated, in the chair, at the hospital.”

“Yeah…”

“You came?”

“Yeah.”

“Looking at me?”

“…Yeah.”

“You wanted me?”

“Yeah.”

Al bit his lip. He squeezed his legs together. Maybe he wasn’t so tired, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Homie, here! This is my first elricest fic. Hope you enjoyed—thank you for reading!
> 
> @homuncuius100


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